


If You Live In Hope, You’re Dancing To A Terrible Tune

by ialpiriel



Series: Shadows Get Long [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Caesar's Legion, Gen, Legion-Aligned Courier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 07:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4697429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ialpiriel/pseuds/ialpiriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Survival's more important than morals, her teacher had said, years before the Legion absorbed them. After the first battle of Hoover Dam, survival's more important than ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Live In Hope, You’re Dancing To A Terrible Tune

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on the [Fallout Kinkmeme](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/5646.html?thread=12424974#t12424974)

“There’s a job for you,” he says. He’s some young recruit. Not tribal. Doesn’t have the meanness in him someone his age would if he were. Can’t be more than half her age. Young yet. Unsure, in front of a pretty woman.

“What is it?” she asks, because being indispensable is a good way to be. If someone up the ladder’s giving her jobs, that means the Old Raven’s lessons paid off. Means Legion’s hard up, too, but that doesn’t mean anything bad. Legion’s too big and too centered to be too smart. Relies too much on men being bigger than life.

“Someone out east. A nation that threatens Caesar.” He’s staring at the ground like he’s afraid of her. They’ll beat it out of him soon enough. Always do. Legion’s good at killing fear in its men. Good at killing hope in its women.

“More information,” she demands, leans forward. She puts her cigarette back in her mouth, sucks. They let her have cigarettes, at least. Good for her nerves. Maybe not so good for her lungs. She has bigger problems that a cough most days.

Boy starts stammering out her next job. Can't get his tongue around the words when she looks him in the eye, so she tries to not look too disdainful when she looks away, so he can use his damn words.

Sounds like an exciting job.

***

The Legion makes her run to the NCR like she’s really a runaway slave. No shoes, not really enough food, just one of their ridiculous fucking white tunics with the X’s. She’s been out of those for years now, too deep in Legion territory to run, at first, and now too entrenched here, too loyal, to need a marker.

NCR flunkies take her in and give her food, water, clothes, shoes. She swipes a pack of cigarettes off one, who doesn’t even notice. She watches him pat himself down later. His buddy laughs at him. They’ve got a couple new recruits guarding her. No discipline. No concern that she’s “ex-legion.” She told them she ran when they lost the Dam-- told them she'd heard stories of the Malpais Legate’s failure; thought to herself that an Eagle, even a young one, would’ve taken the Dam with no trouble. The soldiers believe her. She’s a slave to them. A slave could never make themselves a life somewhere, of course. Slave must want freedom. NCR can’t see the security of being indispensable at the bottom.

“Caesar doesn’t have woman spies,” she hears through the wall, late at night. She has her glass from her dinner--plastic, not glass, so she can't break it and hurt herself or someone else--pressed against the wall. “She must be an escaped slave.”

“You’re right,” another voice sighs. A woman. A ranking officer. She knows the voice, saw her wandering through the holding cell area earlier. A good soldier. High ranked, for this place. Carried herself like an Eagle. Maybe NCR got that bit right, compared to the Legion--it still lets women fight. She’s seen women angrier than she’s seen men. Could be her sample size, though. Not everyone takes to Legion like the Birds did. Cuckoos spent too much time with others, Ravens are too smart, Magpies saw the old things, Owls saw too far ahead. Gulls spent too long scraping, Eagles had too much fight, Vultures had seen too many dead. If a Bird has to change to suit its new place, a Bird will change. They aren’t really birds.

Just carry the birds with them.

Used to be on their arms, and on their skin, but now just in their heads.

Not like the other tribes, that cling to the old things. Not like the tribes that can’t grow their wings back new.

NCR keeps sending her east, puts her on a train wearing civilian clothes and gives her a guard. Some sweet-faced, bright-eyed woman who says she’s from some place called Arroyo. Rolls the R, like the ghouls out of Two Sun did, before Caesar put them down. She plays along, nods like she cares. The girl seems flattered. Can’t be more than nineteen, maybe. A good age, if she remembers. She’d been deep enough in Legion territory then to have her freedom back. Still had one of the Vultures at her side, then, a dark-skinned woman from what used to be Flat Water, her tribe slaughtered by pumas while they slept. Head Owl at the time had said their tribe must have displeased their gods, the Vulture-to-be had snorted and said it was bad luck and a bad decision to camp there. One of the Eagles had snorted too and agreed that it was just bad luck. That Eagle had come out of Mexico, her whole body tattooed so they struggled to find a place to paint her as one of them. She’d been vicious in a fight, and she didn’t talk about where she’d been. Old Raven had seen her for what she was and let her stay. She and the Vulture had gotten along ‘til the day the Legion killed the Eagle, because she spit at the feet of a Legionary and refused to bow her head.

This fair-haired girl would be a Sparrow. Sings pretty, but the first thing that caught her would eat her in a bite.

***

They give her to some doctors who look her over.

“Nothing wrong with her,” they say, as if they expect something different. A mistreated person dies, and that’s how it is. Caesar doesn’t keep the old and the sick. Old Raven died, old Eagle died, old Cuckoos and Owls and Magpies died. Sick Vulture died. Gull too young to keep up with the walk died.

She tells them her name is Lucinda. They take to calling her Lucy. She accepts it. It’s not her name, but she’s worn enough names. Lucinda isn’t her name, either, but it’s what the boys in her town call her. _Lady of the Light_ , she hears the whisper sometimes at night. Headmen beat it out of them, if they say it in the day, tells them there’s no room for superstitious boys and she’s just a woman after all.

Doctors send her to a building full of “other” ex-legion. She pretends. Talks about her tribe as if her tribe isn’t flying still. Lets them pat her shoulders while she summons tears. They tell her about their tribes, and she listens as they list the names of weak tribes who tried to fight. Weak tribes who thought they could hold onto what they were, when all they were was a handful of traditions and some songs and a few names.

She says things to the NCR people inside, nice things that make them believe her. About how much she hates the Legion. About how glad she is that she’s “free.” How much she misses her tribe. About how wonderful the NCR is for taking her, a sad excuse for an ex-slave, into their borders. About how Caesar would have her killed in the same circumstances. She feeds them a line about the scarred-over tattoos covering her front, tells them Caesar burned them to kill her allegiance. Does not tell the Old Raven took her aside on the second night of their walk and ordered her to kill the tattoos, to hide the bird on her chest and the rattlesnake around her belly.

“They will take them from you,” the Old Raven had said, her voice the creak of roots as the tree falls in a storm. “So better you choose and hide them, before someone else forces you to kill the birds on your skin.”

She had dumped the boiling water down her front the next day, screamed her throat raw. That had hidden the bird, though. Killed the bird on her skin the way the legionary would kill the bird that flew to her arm three days after. He had laughed as he drowned it. She had not cried as it stopped struggling.

The NCR in the building get her a job in a factory, making clothes. They put her on a sewing machine-- _old world, old world_ , the Magpie who birthed her would have sing-songed in her ear--and show her how to sew uniforms for soldiers. It’s good enough work. Earns her enough caps to buy herself her own clothes, a backpack, shoes she can trust to carry her over broken glass and needles and cactuses.

She gets a job carrying a package north. She recognizes the name Arroyo, thinks about the Sparrow on the train. Takes the package there, carries one back to the Hub. Easy names, here. All new. She begins drawing a map. Only takes notes in her head though. No notes written until she drops the information.

Five years, the boy who delivered her job to her had said. Five years and you’ll come back. Maybe fewer, if you and your fellow spies can get enough information on the NCR to get us the Dam.

He’d said it like any boy who hasn’t seen enough blood spilled says anything. Second battle would be bloodier than the first. Second battle was for keeps. Not that the first battle hadn’t been--but they’d had that shithead Graham at the front. Man only knew one way to win. He couldn’t have been a Bird, even if he’d been a woman. If a Bird can’t change, a Bird can’t live. Simple tenets. First thing a baby learned at her mother’s breast. Last thing some of them knew, too.

***

She walks east, eventually. Has a package to carry somewhere or other. Never goes into real Legion territory, but she knows their faces when she sees them in towns, “pillars of the community” and “drunks” and “ex-tribals.” NCR never does.

“Tribals all look the same,” some drunk man in a bar laughs one time, in the middle of a conversation about Legion and Tribals and NCR. He says it at her, like he can see the tribal in her no matter how the Legion tried to stamp it out. She quietly agrees. Better to retire, let him think it’s true. She’s not a Cuckoo, reeling him in; she’s not an Eagle, taking him to task and starting a fight. She’s a Raven. Has to be smarter. Doesn’t have to be faster, or better, or more violent. Doesn’t have to survive better.

Only has to survive smarter.

Gets a job carrying an old world piece of junk into New Vegas. Near the Dam. Close to five years, too--maybe an excuse to rendezvous with someone besides in dead drops. Maybe a chance to evaluate a few girls. She’s a Raven. She teaches. They learn what they do. They don’t need to have a name to be what they are.

She gets shot in the head by some tribal in a suit, trying to pretend he’s old-world civilized. No way to be civilized if you’re old world, not after the old world nuked itself all to hell. He’s a Blue Jay, maybe, pretty with an ugly voice. Violent when he knows he can get what he wants.

She wakes up and some old man tells her he dug two bullets out of her skull. She’s got a bald patch where he did his work, but it’s neatly sewn up.

She’ll have to fix her hair, cut it off again maybe, so she can grow it out even. Should cover up the scar, it draws too many eyes. Makes her too memorable as a person instead of a pretty woman. Old Man gives her a suit from one of the bunkers. Fits well enough, but it stands out. She discards it for a set of leather armor as soon as she can.

***

The woman at the outpost--calls herself “Ghost;” Lucinda thinks “Falcon” and then “Peregrine”--says she’s heard nothing from Nipton, down the road. Lucinda starts her walk there. It’s as good a place to start her way toward the Dam as any other.

***

She remembers Vulpes, remembers his dedication. Gives her the shakes, but he’s good at what he does. Voice like a spiked snack cake. Too memorable for a frumentarius, she would say, if she wasn’t a pretty woman doing something equivalent to his job. If he was a woman, he’d be the worst kind of Vulture. The kind that takes joy in the death, instead of just seeing it as necessary. Bad trait, in a Vulture. Bad trait in anyone.

She hails him, “ _Ave_ , true to Caesar,” and tugs her armor open in front to show her scars. She’ll have been warned for. Better have been, since she told her drop contact she was headed east, toward the Dam, since she had heard rumors of Caesar and she had a job to do.

“Caesar wishes to speak with you,” Vulpes thrums, his voice sliding through her ears like the permanent oil slick off the Texas coast. “Cursor Lucullus will meet you at the dock in Cottonwood Cove, to the southeast. He will take you to the Fort.”

Lucinda nods.

As long as she is useful, she will survive.

As long as she survives, a Raven survives.

As long as a Raven survives, the Birds will endure.


End file.
